Sustainability

Note, many of my dozen or so regular readers know that after the last post, which I find now to embarrassingly gushy, my site was moved from Dindimo Secondary School in Gonga, Pare Hills, Kilimanjaro Region, to SEGA Secondary School, Mikunde, Morogoro.  The reason given was Safe and Secure housing issues. (SEE, Be Safe! In posts, below.)  I was bitterly disappointed and also quite upset about the way it was done.  Actually it WAS done really poorly.  It took me awhile to separate my anger at being treated so shabbily by the Peace Corps over the transfer, and my disappointment at not going to the Pare’s.  In the meantime, I had a great time at the 4-day town party in Dar that is swearing in, and I am proud to say that I survived Training, held up my right hand and swore, and am now a Peace Corps Volunteer.  I miss my PCT buddies like anything. 

 

SEGA stands for Secondary Education for Girls Advancement.  It is a girls boarding school which opened its doors in 2009, and now has 150 students in 4 grades.  In December, 2013 we will graduate the first class of Fourth Formers.  The mission of the school is to serve as an educational institution for girls in poverty who have failed to successfully complete Primary School, but who have the ability and potential to succeed in Secondary School.  In reality, this school receives substantial assistance from donors in the USA, and is able to give the selected students a first class private school education, complete with a preliminary year of remedial English and primary subjects, along with enrichment in the form of art, swimming lessons and computer training.

SEGA School turned out to be a brand new campus about 6 miles from Morogoro Town, and reachable by dala dala.  So, I went from looking at my Peace Corps career as an isolated village bibi to a townie, and I also have a very nice 1-bedroom apartment on campus, so no hardship duty for me.  SEGA is quite lovely, with nicely appointed classrooms and dorms, and the staff have been welcoming and professional.  Last week, another volunteer moved in next door to me, and she is a delightful new friend.  Two more volunteers are expected this fall and then there will be 5 of us on campus.

Still, I have been worrying my thoughts about what this means for my Peace Corps career like a loose tooth.

Sustainability:  The Peace Corps spends a lot of time with PCV’s teaching them how to make sustainable change in the cultures where they are stationed.  It’s not enough, says Peace Corps mission and tradition, to come into a community and institute change. Only by both truly becoming a part of the community and being role models can PCV’s, if they’re successfully doing their job, assist the people they serve to change in ways that will be sustainable.  How well does this work?  I don’t know.  I know that I’ve only heard of it from other PCV’s in the negative, that is, I’ve heard  Peace Corps volunteers say ‘I won’t do it , or I won’t do it that way, because it’s not sustainable’.  I have not seen, or at least I don’t think I’ve seen, ways in which sustainable change is accomplished.   Maybe if it’s truly sustainable, you don’t see it; it’s just there, in the village where most use mosquito nets or the family that sends its first child to University.

Sustainability is also, I think, some sort of meta-concept, incorporating the idea that aid to Africa is worse than useless if it does not result in sustainable change.  The ‘give a man a fish’ concept, only in Africa it’s not that simple.  If you give an African a fish, he will eat for a day.  If you teach the African to fish, pretty soon there will be no fish left in Lake Victoria and he will starve anyway. But that’s for another post.

Does SEGA fit this model?  Well, on the one hand, it is heavily supported by American donations and assistance.  At SEGA, my job is Volunteer, NOT Peace Corps volunteer.  A SEGA volunteer is an American and UK woman or group of women that comes here for a couple of months to a couple of years and volunteers to help out with enrichment and tutoring.  So I am not, as I was trained to be, a Secondary School teacher, with responsibility for a Form or part of a Form.  I am a wealthy American who is helping young women out of poverty.  SEGA is the product of a Philadelphia NGO, and has an American director and an Australian woman who as a VSO volunteer is director of volunteers and curriculum.  The campus was built with a USAID grant.  The girls are on 100% scholarship.   

On the other hand, SEGA is a registered Tanzanian secondary school, which means that the teachers are under the Ministry of Health and Education.  Students take Form II and O level exams, with girls who pass receiving the diplomas that they need to go on to A levels, college, and University. The aim of the school is certainly to continue to stay in business, and to expand.  There is a long-term plan to create businesses on campus, at which the girls will work, to provide income for the school and work experience for the girls who may not go on to higher education.  In that sense, it’s ‘permanent’ and no doubt will make a long-term difference in the lives of the girls who are smart enough and lucky enough to attend.

Did I want to be in a village? Take my place as a teacher and bibi, experiencing it all? Yes.  Is this a village?  No. It is, however, a community, and to my first impression a dedicated and worthy one, and there is work to be done.  But in a way I feel disappointed and perhaps a little underserved by the Peace Corps TZ staff.  I could have come here, as others do and will, to volunteer without having to learn to use a charcoal stove, wash my clothes by hand, or even to speak Kiswahili. (Although I wouldn’t have missed PCT for the world, it was truly a wonderful summer.)  I am proud to be a Peace Corps Volunteer, I was trained for this, and I can’t help wanting to be more integrated in the Tanzanian culture.  I don’t want to be cut off from the experience of Tanzania by American money.  But if I can serve  these girls, isn’t that what I came over here to do? 

Of course I am worried that I’m just obsessing over this village/SEGA thing as a way of avoiding commitment.   As I’ve said, there is work to be done, and these girls have been given a lifeline, not just a helping hand.  Perhaps sustainability shouldn’t be my guiding principle.  I’m reminded of the story of the person who walked along a beach covered with thousands of starfish that had been cast up on the sand by a storm.  As she walked, she bent down and picked up creature after creature, throwing them back into the sea, and safety.  Her friend wondered and asked her, “Why are you doing this?  There are so many starfish, you’ll never be able to throw them all back.”  To which she replied, “No, but for the ones that I do, it will make all the difference in the world.”

I’ve always been impatient, and no good at follow-through.  I need to stay with this until I can see how I can grow and learn from it.  They told us it would not be easy, and it isn’t, just not in the way I thought it wouldn’t be easy.  That isn’t easy.